Backup service IDrive launches a face recognition API for developers

I did a bit of a double take when I first saw this announcement. IDrive, an online cloud storage and backup service, is launching a face recognition API today that goes up against the likes of AWS Rekognition and others. That seems like a bit of an odd move for a backup company, but it turns out that IDrive has actually been in the face recognition game for a while. Last year, the company launched IDrive People to help its users find faces in photos they’ve backed up on its service. With its API, IDrive is targeting a very different market, though, and entering into the API business for the first time.

IDrive Face, as the service is called, includes the standard tools for detecting and analyzing multiple faces within a still image that are at the core of every face detection API. For this, the API provides the usual bounding boxes and metadata for all faces. There are also face comparison and verification features to identify people by their face, and a gender, age and emotion detection option. All requests to the API are encrypted, and using the API looks to be pretty straightforward.

IDrive promises that its tool’s accuracy and performance is comparable to AWS Rekognition, but at a lower price. The company offers a developer plan for $49.50/month plus $0.0001 per transaction, at up to 75 transactions per minute, with unlimited storage included. There’s also a business plan for $124.50/month, $0.0001 per transaction and up to 500 transactions per minute, as well as custom enterprise plans and free trials for those who want to give the service a try.

AWS’ pricing is, as usual, a bit more complicated, and while there’s no monthly cost, most serious users will end up paying more for Rekognition than IDrive Face, though Rekognition offers a number of features (like text, object, scene and celebrity recognition) that aren’t available in the competing product, which only focuses on faces.